The tremendous strain under which Jesus has lived every moment since he first appeared at Raymond is evidently telling on him. It is something no one can measure. He has frankly told his disciples that he would have to visit other cities, and that the recent impassioned appeal to him from the President and Cabinet of the Chinese Republic to bring his message to the millions over there, was an appeal to which he must listen. It ought not to surprise his disciples if at any time he should disappear. He has, indeed, intimated as much to more than one of the ministers, as if anticipating their bewilderment when someday soon he would no longer be here. All we know definitely is the fact of his stay with us until the great Congress in New York in October.

There was silence as Maxwell stopped reading, one of those silences to which they were all accustomed since he came.

“Shall you go to New York for the Congress?” Dr. West asked Maxwell.

“Yes. I am planning to go with Mrs. Maxwell. It is an occasion I cannot miss. And Stanton and his wife are going. And you and Rollin? Are you going?” Maxwell asked Rachel.

“Yes. We feel we must see him again. Our hearts long to see him.”

“I want to go also,” Jasper Carter said in the subdued voice that marked his new birth.

“It will be a great event,” Maxwell said earnestly. “Perhaps the greatest in all history. I hope you can all go.”

At this moment Mrs. Maxwell was called to the door by Martha. After a moment, she came back into the room, bringing Martha with her. “Martha has received a letter she wants to share with us,” Mrs. Maxwell said.

“It is a letter from Jesus. It came this morning,” Martha said simply. She began to read it aloud, while the company listened in awed silence.

It was a letter that breathed the very spirit of the Divine, but written in words so human that every syllable of it seemed as commonly natural as Martha herself. At the close there were a few sentences remembering the Raymond friends and mentioning by name all who were present there at Mr. Maxwell’s.

The letter itself was a letter of good cheer and a reminder to Martha of her own discipleship, and the glad meeting she would have with Loreen in the other world.

“I wanted to share it with you,” said Martha. “I shall keep it always, with my New Testament he gave me.” Then she went back to her work.

“Think of that!” Maxwell cried out after a long silence. “He finds time in the rush of tremendous world events to write a letter like that to a ‘hired girl!’ What a priceless document in the years to come.”

“Priceless indeed,” murmured Stanton. “A letter from Jesus! What will be its value someday? Martha is rich!”